From the Bottom Up Part 20

I looked around for something to do to earn a living. I found a young bookbinder in a commercial house, and as he was a master craftsman, I advised him to hang out a shingle and work for himself. He did so.

When I was casting around for a new method of earning a living I thought of him, and asked him to take me as an apprentice. He did so, and I put an ap.r.o.n on and began to work at his bench. One day, when the reporters were hard up for news, one of them called for an interview.

"Have you ever published any sermons, Mr. Irvine?"

"Yes; one, and a fine one."

"Where was it published?"

"Right here in New Haven!"

"A volume?"

"Yes."

I went to my case and produced a book--I had sewed it, backed it, bound and tooled it. It was my first job, and I was proud of it. I am proud of it now. It is the best sermon I ever preached.

Another day a professor in the Yale Medical School called to have some books bound at the bindery.

"Who is that fellow at your bench?" he asked.

"Mr. Irvine," the bookbinder replied.

"The Socialist?"

"Yes."

He took the young man aside and told him that he could expect no recognition from the "best citizens" as long as he kept me. Off came my ap.r.o.n, and I looked around again.

I was very fond of Dr. T.T. Munger. In his vigorous days his was a great intellect, and when in his study one day he told me that I had no gospel to preach, I felt deeply the injustice of the charge. I could not argue. I would not defend myself. I valued his friendship too highly. I hit upon a plan, however. I had published in a labour paper seventeen sermons for working people. I went to a printer and told him that, if he would print them in a book, I would peddle them from door to door until I got the printer's bill. They were printed in a neat volume, ent.i.tled "The Master and the Chisel." I paid the printer's bill, and gave the rest away. I sent one to Dr. Munger; and this is what he said of it:

"DEAR MR. IRVINE:

"Many thanks for the little book you sent me. I have read nearly all the brief chapters, and this would not be the case if they were dull. That they certainly are not. Nor would they have held my interest if they did not in the main strike me as true. I can say more, namely, that they seem to me admirably suited to the people you have in charge, and good for anybody. They have at least done me good, and often stirred me deeply. Their strong point is the humanity that runs along their pages--along with a sincere reverence. I hope they will have a wide circulation."

The tide was ebbing, but it was not yet out. The announcement that I was a Socialist brought, of course, the members of the party around me, but on Sunday nights, when they came, expecting a discourse on economic determinism and found me searching for the hidden springs of the heart, and the larger personal life, as well as the larger social life, they went away disappointed and never came back.

As I looked around, however, at the churches and the university, I could find nothing to equal the social pa.s.sion of the socialists--it was a religion with them. True, they were limited in their expression of that pa.s.sion, but they were live coals, all of them, and I was more at home in their meetings than in the churches.

CHAPTER XVIII

I BECOME A SOCIALIST

I soon joined the party and gave myself body, soul and spirit to the Socialists' propaganda. The quest for a living took me to a little farm on the outskirts of the city. There were eighteen acres--sixteen of them stones.

Gradually I began to feel that my rejection was not a mere matter of being let alone, of ignoring me; it was a positive att.i.tude. There was a design to drive me out of the city. On the farm I was without the gates in person but my influence was within, among the workers. We spent every penny we had on the farm. I hired a neighbouring farmer to plow my ground and plant my seed, for I had neither horse nor machinery. I told him I had a little cottage in the woods in Ma.s.sachusetts that I was offering for sale and I would pay him out of the proceeds. At first he believed me and did the work.

It took me two months to get that cottage sold and get the money for it. The farmer's son camped on my doorstep daily. Every day I met him, in the fields or on the road. I spoke in such soft tones and promised so volubly every time he approached me that he got the impression that I had no cottage--that I was a fraud and cheating his father. He spread that impression. He began after a while to insult me, to make fun of me. I debated with myself one afternoon whether when he again repeated his insults I should thrash him or treat him as a joke. I decided on the former. Meantime the check for the cottage came and relieved the situation. Despite my inability to become a Yogi, I believed in the New Thought. My wife and I used to "hold the thought,"

"make the mental picture," and "go into the silence." We did this regularly.

I had an old counterfeit ten-dollar bill for a decoy. I shut my eyes and imagined myself stuffing big bundles of them into the pigeon-holes of my desk.

I got an incubator, filled it with Buff Orpington eggs and kept the thermometer at 103 F. My knees grew as hard as a goat's from watching it. In the course of events, two chickens came. We had pictured the yard literally covered with them. These poor things broke their legs over the eggs. My wife was more optimistic than I was.

"Wait," she said, "these things are often several days late." So we waited; waited ten days and then refilled the thing and began all over again.

We lost an old hen that was so worthless that we never looked for her.

In the fullness of her time she returned with a brood of fourteen! She had been in "the silence" to some purpose!

"Well, let's let the hens alone," my wife said with a sigh; "they know this business better than we do." But we kept on monkeying with mental images--it was great fun.

During our stay on that farm I did four times more pastoral work than I had ever done in my life. I was the minister of the nondescript and the dest.i.tute. I presided over funerals, weddings, baptisms, strikes, protests, ma.s.s meetings. n.o.body thought of paying anything. To those I served I had a sort of halo, a wall of mystery; to me it was often the halo of hunger--of the wolf and the wall--yes, a wall, truly, and very high that separated me from my own.

An incident will show what my brethren thought of my service to the poor. I was in the public library one day when the scribe of the ministerial a.s.sociation to which I belonged accosted me:

"h.e.l.lo, Irvine!"

"h.e.l.lo, C----! Splendid weather we're having, isn't it?"

"Splendid," replied C----; and in the same breath he said, "say, you don't come around to the a.s.sociation; do you want your name kept on the roll?"

I hesitated for a moment, then said: "Whatever would give you most pleasure, brother--leaving it on or taking it off--do that!"

That was all--not another word--he reported that I wanted my name removed, and that practically ended my ministerial standing in the Congregational ministry.

The Jewish Rabbi who had taken part in our opening service met me on the street one day.

"Dr. Smyth and I are coming to see you, Irvine," he said.

"I'll be mighty glad to see you both, Rabbi. What are you coming for?"

"Well, we think it's too bad that the labour gang use you as a sucker and we want to see if we can't get a place in some mission for you."

"Rabbi, some of your rich Jews have been after you for appearing on our platform. Come now, isn't that so?"

"Well, it's because they believe as I believe, that you are used as a sucker."

"I don't like your word, Rabbi; but there are fifty ministers in town.

If Capital has forty-nine suckers, why not let Labour have one?"

That made him rather furious and he said:

"You remind me of Jesus, a fanatic. He died at 33 when he might have lived to a good old age and done some good!"

"That," I said, "is the highest compliment I have ever received." I bared my head at the word and then left him on the sidewalk.